1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to the enclosure design of an electronic apparatus, and more particularly to a scalable computer system equipped with a reconfigurable chassis module.
2. Related Art
Traditional electronic enclosure design requires a fixed and predefined overall support chassis that provides the mechanical support for the internal electronic components. This limitation prevents some configurable options to be part of the base design dictated by the overall dimensions of the chassis and its internal structure. Generally, any system that does not require the full configurable options has unnecessary weight, empty unutilized space and cost associated with the system mechanical design. As future technology improvement become available, the mechanical design may not be able to accommodate the new form factors and may require a redesigned new chassis to support the feature, which would require extra cost. For example, new CPU and memory upgrades have to be supported with new power supplies or new interface sockets for higher power density and faster access speed requirements. Then extra cost comes after because the overall form factor of the chassis is fixed.
Furthermore, the traditional chassis design involves structural pieces of the chassis assembled within a sheet metal shell which prevent chassis level modularization. The traditional design also makes service of internal parts very difficult to reach and take longer time to complete.